


The Tower

by alcibiades



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Arthur is waiting on the roof with a helicopter just in case something goes wrong, F/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 14:20:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1553444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcibiades/pseuds/alcibiades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which everyone expects Robert Fischer to fail, and he defies them repeatedly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mr-finch (soubriquet)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soubriquet/gifts).



Robert Fischer considered it one of the greater triumphs of his life that he had consistently managed to avoid doing what was expected of him. It was a perverse feeling that had manifested itself sometime between the ages of seven and eight, a freakish thrill he got from defying the desires of his parents, his nanny, even his private tutor. 

The streak of wildness had never run through him so broadly as to compel him into true misbehavior, and it came along with the intense - perhaps genetic, he thought, sometimes, remembering Maurice - desire to succeed. It was less the fare of typical teenage rebellion (there were very few alcohol-fueled parties or ill-advised sexual rendezvouses) than it was the struggle of a sapling trying to make itself known in the shadow of a much larger tree.

When he was thirty-two, his father died and he dissolved the conglomerate Maurice Fischer had spent a lifetime building. It felt freeing - it took very little time, all things considered. It felt like snapping his fingers and suddenly becoming his own man, no longer just somebody's son. The news media ran wild with it - paparazzi hounded him day and night, trying to capture some hint of whatever crack they assumed had grown in his psyche. What Robert knew, though, was that there was no crack, just a sense of certainty and purpose stronger than it had ever been before.

When he was thirty-three, he brokered a deal with Proclus Global that put him on the cover of Forbes and landed him an unavoidably impressive article in Time magazine about the new solar energy panels that his scientists had pioneered. _A Businessman with a Soul_ , the headlines lauded him. He felt good. Everyone had expected him to fail, and he had defied them, again, smiling and well-rested.

He decided to build a new building. It was a primitive instinct, he knew, the desire to leave his mark on the world in a way that was inescapably indelible, but it was what he wanted and he felt that he deserved it, after all he'd done. The architecture firm they hired was very modern, environmentally friendly, full of young people with big ideas. 

One of the girls they put on the project was twenty-six and she had a name straight out of Greek mythology: Ariadne. She smiled at him over her shoulder when she caught him watching her - Robert liked to be involved in things. He wasn't his father that way; Maurice had always preferred to send proxies in his stead. That was how Maurice had missed things, though, like the familiar way Ariadne's mouth twisted when she saw Robert, like she recognized him, like she was remembering something fondly.

He went to stand behind her, his hand at the small of her back, and they both leaned over the blueprints. "Are you here to lead me through mazes with a ball of red string?" he said softly, and she stiffened a little, like she was startled, but he laughed and then she did too, and she relaxed.

And there was something familiar about her, something he couldn't quite put a finger on. There wasn't a lot of time in his life for relationships, and he regretted it sometimes, remembering that his father had been the same way. When the building was built, a magnificent spiraling thing that looked impossible from the outside, they had a party on the 130th floor, and Robert invited the entire architecture firm. 

Ariadne showed up looking slightly awkward in a plum-colored silk dress, her hair spilling abundantly over her bare shoulders. They were pale and freckled, which charmed Robert, because it was a rare thing to see in Los Angeles. He brought her a glass of champagne. 

"Do you like the building?" she asked him, looking up at him, and then past him, out the window.

He smiled at her. "Of course I do," he answered. "It's beautiful. I'm completely pleased by it. Did you enjoy working on it?"

She smiled back at him, biting her bottom lip with her little white teeth. "I did," she said. "More than usual. Even for a firm with a reputation as cutting-edge as ours, a lot of the things we design are still pretty stolid and straightforward. Doing something like this was...refreshing, I guess."

"Refreshing," Robert repeated. He turned, to stand next to her, following her gaze out the window. "That's an adjective I can live with."

Ariadne laughed briefly, a clear, bell-like sound, and then she sobered, a small frown lodging itself on her smooth forehead. She had the most guileless eyes Robert had ever seen. "Can I ask you something?" she said. "It's kind of personal, I'm sorry, and I know it's not exactly the kind of question that a professional asks her employer."

"I'm not the world's biggest traditionalist," Robert said. "Go ahead."

"What was it like, growing up with -- your father?" she asked. She immediately looked worried for having asked it, and opened her mouth again, to justify. "I just heard rumors that he wasn't, you know, the warmest."

Robert smiled at her. He knew what she was thinking, and the pain was there, certainly, but it was a distant memory of pain, easily overshadowed by the present. "He wasn't," he answered. "I used to think sometimes that he was the worst thing to ever happen to me. I used to be so bitter because I had this idea of what a father was supposed to be like, and Maurice was...well, he was never that."

"But?" she prompted, looking up at him, her lips leaving little butterfly-wings of lipstick on the rim of the glass she was holding.

He shrugged. "But something changed," he said. "Something indefinable. After he died, I realized --" he shook his head, gazing at his own reflection in the window. "I'm not sure what I realized, but perhaps it was that he didn't need me to be a clone of himself. That nobody needed that anymore, now that he was gone, and I could do things my way. That I was capable of doing things my way." The corner of his mouth twitched. "That he did care about me. He was just bad at showing it."

Ariadne grabbed his hand abruptly, and when he looked back at her, she appeared almost stricken. There was some kind of emotion on her face, and even if he couldn't read it, he could see its strength. "I'm glad, Robert," she said. "I'm so glad."

She wrapped her small arms around him. She was stronger than she looked, and she smelled like vanilla and jasmine. He was surprised but it didn't feel bad; it felt good, and he didn't care who was in the room, who was looking. He was allowed to have what he wanted. "I'm a little confused," he said, putting his champagne glass down on the table next to them, so he could hug her back, "but thank you."

When she pulled back she was still looking at him, as earnest as the summer days in Los Angeles were long, and he couldn't help himself, he leaned down and kissed her, watching her dark eyelashes settle against her cheeks. She was lipstick and champagne and a very soft mouth that he could tell was inescapably stubborn when it wanted to be, and her hands were trembling when she reached up to put them on his shoulders.

"I think," he said softly, stepping back, "that it just took me a really long time to figure out my life didn't always have to be about what my father wanted."

Her cheeks were flushed as she looked up at him, but her eyes were just as clear as they had been before. "So what's your life about now?" she asked.

Robert smiled at her, and he felt an immense fondness welling up in his chest, a feeling he had never been quite sure he was capable of until the day he had signed his name on the papers breaking up the component businesses of Fischer-Morrow. "It's about what I want," he said, and he pushed open the door to the balcony and led Ariadne out, into the night.


End file.
